


Snows

by orphan_account



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: Foursome, Multi, Post-Canon, moresome, over 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-06
Updated: 2008-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diamond Took, her life and loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snows

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dana.

1419

On the day of the party Estella took Diamond up to the room set up for them, took the reading glasses off Diamond's nose, opened up the bun she had her hair tied up on, and fluffed it around her face, then sat watching her with a smile on her face. 'You know what?' she said after a while. 'I think I'll have to fight the boys to get a dance out of you tonight.'

Diamond laughed, both incredulous and nervous.

She'd seen Peregrin and Meriadoc as they rode back – as had everyone. There had been a welcome home party before, the unofficial one, with banners and horns and fiddles and cheering, well before the official one set for the night. She hadn't recognised them at all, except for hobbits pointing them out, and for the strange armour everyone said they would be wearing.

It felt silly, now, to think of going up to Pippin and asking if he still remembered her. They'd had one summer together, as children, when they were witches for a month, warriors for a week, and adventurers of different shapes and sizes. She'd been Larona, that summer, and he'd been the White Rider, and they'd had bitter feuds one day and fought side by side against oak trunks and willow branches the next.

To her it was yesterday, and the day Nanna threw their treasure maps in the fire was only hours away, but the Peregrin on horseback in a parade, he was a thousand years away.

Estella, just one second away, and then, no time at all, as she kissed Diamond's cheek, and proceeded to undo her bodice, peeling back the woolen vest, trailing fingertips across her neck.

\--

But it was easy, and Diamond never would have thought it would be easy, or that Pippin would still laugh the way he always had, and climb a tree just to whoop and holler like a boy overcome with joy.

And Diamond never would have thought she'd be dancing on tables, singing and laughing and twirling, and falling asleep outside while the music still played, and the stars wrote messages across the skies.

  
1423

There was a shape of a hand on the snow before the Crickhollow house, next to hollows and nooks, the outline of a tumble of two or three. The hand-print's insides had melted with body-heat, and now the inside was lined with the brittlest of ice.

The windows were dark, and the merry colours of the house's front were muted, brown turned to black, green to grey, in the midst of the brilliance of white, by the shroud of powdery snow falling from the sky, and whipped up by the wind, dancing in the air.

There was a fire somewhere inside, but on the outside one could only see a slight golden glow at the edge of the left-most window.

\--

Many a maid did I take to dance  
Many a maid I kissed  
Many a maid gave me a glance  
But none of them I missed

I'm a post-hobbit, hey ho, hey ho  
I roam, I never do stay  
I'm a post hobbit, hey ho, hey ho  
To a lass I never say nay

The song was easy enough to memorize, and soon Diamond was singing along with Merry as they shoveled the snow outside the house at Crickhollow. It was a bright morning, the sun's light multiplied by the whiteness all around.

'Is there a rude verse coming up that you're avoiding because of me?' she asked, because she knew something about songs, and something also about gentlehobbits like Merry.

'Yes,' Merry said, looking, Diamond was satisfied to see, a little shame-faced.

'I'm sure Stella's sung worse to me already,' Diamond said.

Merry grinned. 'Yes, I suppose she has, hadn't she?'

'Let's hear it, then,' said Diamond, sticking her shovel up in the snow with finality. No rude verse, no more shoveling, and it'd be up to Merry to clear the walkway alone.

'All right,' said Merry, amused, and began to recite a verse that had Diamond laughing helplessly by the end of the second rhyme.

They sang the song, and a couple of Estella's, while they finished the work. Arms aching from the work, and throats from singing in the frost, they made their way back in to find Pippin, Estella, and breakfast.

  
1427

Diamond was tired, tired to the bone, tired to the soul. She'd spent the week organising the wedding. No-one seemed to understand she didn't want to be asked about every flower, every bit of lace, every guest and every card and every little thing that went with the monster of an occasion.

No-one seemed to understand.

She slumped into bed, between the wonderful covers she'd been dreaming of all week, shaking off the chill that had been with her since the morning – two hours in the cold, packing a cart to send off to Northfarthing, had been enough for the chill to sink its teeth in her bones in ways that could only be cured by a hot bath or half an hour under a pile of blankets. And she didn't have time for a bath. There was only a few hours until morning, anyway.

She longed for sleep, but her mind wouldn't let her sleep, not yet. Worries lined themselves up and presented themselves one by one – wedding worries making room, eventually, for larger, darker, looming, living horrors behind them.

As she fell towards sleep, the worries became more solid, more peculiar. One wore Merry's face, and Diamond muttered to him, no, not now, I'm tired, I don't want to play. They always did play games, Diamond and Merry, not saying certain things, and saying others in different ways, lying deftly with truths.

Another creature was a mask, in the shape of Pippin's face. Behind it, a shadowy figure, empty white light, unknowable.

A third creature was Estella, sneaking in, she was sure, because it was impossible to think of Pippin and Merry and not think of her. Only Stella had no face at all, and when Diamond reached for her she was slippery as an eel.

Her fingers grasped at the pillow, numb with the inner cold, even as she began to thaw under the blankets. She sighed and gave up, for now, on sleeping.

It's not going to work, she thought, close to tears. I have to sleep. It's not going to work. I shouldn't marry him. Someday I might meet someone I should marry and I can't because I'll be married already. But I have to now, don't I? It's all arranged. I have to.

Tired to the bone.

She only cried a little, warm tears that soon cooled on her cheeks, and fell asleep without noticing.

  
1429

She spent years adoring him, and more than a year detesting him.

Later she couldn't understand why they'd all stuck with her, all three, when she'd been so insufferable.

Estella became pregnant, and all she could think of was how bitter she was it wasn't her. How everyone must be comparing her to Estella, and thinking she's a bad wife. She knew she was a bad wife. An impatient, intolerant wife, who'd made false promises of devotion and then found herself, following the engagement, growing hollow with fear.

And everyone did focus on Estella and Estella's growing belly. Diamond said nothing much, less than usually, and suffered.

There was a glow about Estella these days – cliche or not, there was. She glowed. Softer, rounder, less sharp and tangy and hot. Worst of all, Diamond found herself both missing and loathing Estella's touch. It had been a very long time since they were close. She wanted to touch that swelling belly, but turned away instead.

Then one day she was making her buns, because she had to do something, with these hands of hers that wanted to trash and tear and bruise, and Pippin snuck up behind her, and whispered something sweet and secret in her ear, and the years dropped away like a curtain.

'Stars,' she sobbed later, between the blankets, warm all over as if she'd never been cold. 'Oh, stars, Pippin.'

  
1430

Another winter of hard snows. Diamond remembered being snowed in, and longed for it now, for all the backbreaking work it would mean later on, trying to clear the snow and repair damages. Snowed-in days were secret, stolen days, when you were practically expected to do nothing but lie in under the blankets with hot tea and your family.

Estella had warned her that she'd only have a few more months of privacy; that after the baby was born she and Pippin would turn into she and the baby and Pippin. Diamond had said that was just what she wanted, but on the other hand...

On the other hand it would be nice to be snowed in for a little while.

  
1438

The wooden toy horse buried into Diamond's back, but right now she didn't care. In a moment she would have to stop this nonsense and get up and clean the room and start on supper before the kids woke up. In a moment. But for now, Pippin was kissing her and she was kissing Pippin and the toy horse could tattoo its unlikely zig zag patterns on her back for all she cared.

'Not playing now, are you?' she asked him after a while.

His eyes, bright and serious, held the answer. Love went through her, shaking her soul, as it always did, when he gave her that look, when there was no joke or story or holding back between them. 'You should stop playing more often,' she whispered.

Pippin leaned down and kissed her again, hungrily.

And that was her love. Merry and Estella didn't seem to have half the trouble with him as she did – a problem that was probably hers, but about him.

She wanted him to be serious. And he was afraid to be, most times. But he was hers, and she knew that now, and no longer needed convincing.

Except occasionally.

  
1442

The snow was old, brown in places, and hard, as if half-way into being ice. Most of it had melted, leaving only its tightly packed hearts, there to sit until the ground melted as well and mud gave way to dry earth and new grass.

The sky was white; the branches stood like black bones against it, over a dark earth.

Pippin and Estella were leading Faramir and Fredegar around the tracks on ponies. Faramir sat stiff and upright.

'He's going to fall,' remarked Merry. He and Diamond were watching from a little way off.

Diamond nodded, frowning in worry. 'He's trying to look like the knights in his book.'

'He'll be all right,' said Merry, noticing her look. 'They're good ponies, they won't step on him if he does fall.'

'I know.' Diamond tried to push it from her mind. 'Freddy's doing well,' she added.

Merry grinned. 'Takes after his dad.'

Diamond smiled wryly. 'Oh? I heard you didn't do so well on your first few rounds on a pony.'

Merry groaned. 'Does he have to tell you everything?'

'Yes, of course,' said Diamond sweetly. 'He tells you everything about me, and me everything about you. It's only a fair trade.'

'I suppose it is,' laughed Merry. 'And what he doesn't know Estella fills you in on.'

'What a strange little family we are,' she said absent-mindedly, her eyes turned back to her handsome son, who would topple from the saddle if the pony so much as shifted weight.

She became aware of being watched, and looked up, startled, at the heights of Merry, and saw a gentle look in his eyes, and a smile that wasn't joking as much as it usually did.

She returned it.

That was the first time they told each other they loved each other – perhaps, in a way, it was the first time they noticed it.

  
1450

The wool of Estella's coat had turned moist as the snow flakes melted in the smial's warmth. Diamond pressed her cheek against it, in no hurry to let go, or let Estella out of it. That would come eventually.

The lads had left at last, amidst a flurry of activity that seemed to stretch on forever. They'd taken three other hobbits with them, hence the fuss – Diamond did think they'd have left with nothing but their cloaks if they'd gone by themselves. As it was, with Freddy and Willow and Robin to accompany them, there was packing, and more packing, and suddenly Merry remembered the books he ought to take to compare the Rohan herbs to Shire ones, and notebooks and quills, and Pippin remembered a dozen matters of state that had to be looked at, and if it wasn't for them wanting to come back before the planting, they'd have stayed until the planting and beyond and might never have got going.

They hadn't had time to kiss their wives goodbye, not properly, between the sheets, in secret places, and for a very long time. They'd settled for pecks on the lips and sweetness remembered and promised, and a bundle of Diamond's wheat and seed buns with Estella's well-preserved jams, stuffed into one of the topmost packs.

It was so quiet now, and all of a sudden, with them finally on their way.

Estella and Diamond stood in the hallway of their silent house, holding each other, in no hurry at all.

'They'll come back, right?' Estella said at last. It wasn't like her to sound so unsure.

Diamond smiled in the wool. 'Of course, my love. This time they'll come back, and we don't ever have to let them go off again. At least alone.'

Estella laughed at that, and they took each other's husband's kiss off each other's lips, and then returned them, over and over, until their handsome lads came back to them.

  
1472

The first snow is hardly more than ice, white flakes scattered gently on still standing grass stalks on Frodo-lad's carefully cut lawn. The ice made Diamond's feet prickle. She felt the cold more these days.

Frodo-lad, grey-templed and crinkly-eyed, was hardly a little lad anymore, but he'd always be Frodo-lad, because there was still plenty of room for confusion otherwise – with a legend, or with a little boy two houses down Bag Row who was, these days, mostly concerned with learning to walk. Fro-Fro, they called him, to distinguish.

Diamond stood in the rising wind, wrapped in her shawl, and admired the first snow. She was waiting, but this seemed a moment outside time, for now, and she was thinking of days she hadn't thought of for so long, being young as days and looking at a different expanse of town, futher north, and scattered just the same with the magical powder, not quite real snow yet, but a promise of it. The best toy the skies could give. One year the snow had come with Yuletide, no earlier, and that's just what her grandma had said, it's a mathom the skies give you.

Pippin and Merry and Estella all arrived in a bundle together. She waved at them from on top of the hill, and they waved back, and she went back inside to wake the others up. The mouths had arrived early, she said, all ready for the feast.

\--

Frodo-lad had yielded them the master bedroom, he and his wife retiring laughing into the smaller bedrooms. Diamond had protested, but not too strongly. It was never easy for her to sleep without the others near.

Estella and Merry slept wrapped up together, Merry's right arm over the covers, still so cold to the touch. Diamond petted Pippin's belly, tracing the round shape – for Pippin had finally started to fill out at the age of 70, and was now, at 82, and after a handsome meal, practically robust.

'Careful, or it will burst,' he said with a grin. She answered that with a peck on his shoulder, and lay her fingers flat against his skin, feeling his warmth. She fell asleep there, in the crook of his arms. He watched her for a while, before nodding off himself, his thoughts filled with foreign lands and endings, old friends, and children, as it so often was when he came to this place, this ancient smial, this birthplace of beginnings.

\--

In the morning he woke to the chill in her skin.


End file.
